


Cradled In Love

by thisloveisradiant



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Gentle reminder that the loves of his life are dead, Kusa needs more love, Merry Christmas amirite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 04:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17134874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisloveisradiant/pseuds/thisloveisradiant
Summary: Kusanagi wasn’t sure if he was dreaming, hallucinating, seeing ghosts, or receiving angels’ blessings.But he didn’t need to know anymore.





	Cradled In Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OdetoKosmos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OdetoKosmos/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, everyone! And happy belated birthday to the dearest Manisha, I love you. And by love I meant here have this feel :) 
> 
> This fic is inspired by the song "Cradled in love" by Poets of the fall, please listen to the song while reading for maxium feel :)

Kusanagi wasn’t sure if he was dreaming.

He found himself sitting on the couch inside the bar, flipping through a worn out album. He didn’t exactly see the pictures, somehow they were so, so blurry to his eyes, but he knew what should be in there. The pictures of them. All three of them, smiling, laughing, making ridiculous poses like some idiots without a care in the world. He remembered, never forgot, holding such precious memories close and deep in his very soul as if they could save him.

They should have saved him.

Reminiscence, or perhaps something else (mourning, grieving, lamenting — no, not those, wouldn’t be those, couldn’t afford to be those), thunders in his heart tore him asunder. The watery blurriness of his eyes burnt.

Not yet.

Kusanagi hung his head low, fingers tangling in his messy hair.

There were chores that needed to be done, and things to be fixed, and battles to be fought, and people to be protected.

Not now.

There was nothing else but a window in front of him. The sky beyond the glass was only a small piece of mostly blue, like a clumsy paper cutting and painting game. As though a child had drawn a pinch of clouds with a stained white chalk, chose a pale blue one to grind on the rest of the page, then glued it carelessly on the wall. Maybe the whole world outside that window was just that. Narrow, skewed, poorly drawn, cold, unreal.

Even that was fading now.

Kusanagi looked down at the album again. The only thing vibrant, brimming with bright colours in this place.

_“Neh, neh, King, Kusanagi-san, I discovered something very important in the school’s backyard today!”_

_“...Ah?”_

_“Huh? What is it?”_

_“Ta-da! A kitty! Look at her grumpy face, doesn’t she look just like King? Can we keep her at the bar?”_

_“Right, a kitty. Wait. A kitty!? Where did you find her? Put her back! You can’t even feed yourself to begin with, don’t even think about keeping a pet.”_

_“Buuuuuut..~”_

_“No but. Puppy eyes don’t work on me.”_

_“Meoww.”_

_“Nor k-kitty eyes.”_

_“King, a little help here, please!”_

_“......One puppy is enough work.”_

_“...Eh?”_

_“...Pffft, well said, Mikoto!”_

_“Che, meanies. How could you two resist a kitty’s cuteness? Right, I know. Here, King, hold her, and Kusanagi-san, put a hand on her head. No, no, like this, gently… Okay! Uncle Mizuomi, please take a picture of us right now? I have to show them how cute we look with a kitty!”_

_“Haha, gotcha, kiddos. Cheese.”_

And then there was this one.

_“So, I was thinking, before I knew it, it was already summer. I can swear yesterday it was still chilly, yet right now I just want to bath in ice. Weather is so hard to understand…”_

_“Oi.”_

_“Yes, King?”_

_“Totsuka… Maybe you will feel much cooler if you don’t cling to Mikoto like that. He’s a natural heater exclusively reserved for winter.”_

_“...Oi. That’s not the problem either.”_

_“But you’re cleaning and King’s hoarding the couch for himself, I have nowhere else to sit.”_

_“How about you lending me a hand, then?”_

_“Mhmhhhhhhhh.”_

_“Brats. You two are both such good for nothing brats.”_

_“Aw, Kusanagi-san, don’t be mad, here, I’ll hug you too~”_

_“Get off me, it’s hot, and I don’t know you.”_

_“There, there, is this better?”_

_“Don’t cling to me! Goddamnit, I saw that, Mikoto, don’t you dare!”_

_“Heh. Your face was funny.”_

_“Delete it. Totsuka, just stop hugging me. Please.”_

_“Nope.”_

_“Nope~!”_

Kusanagi flipped another page. His eyes grew a little heavier, a little distant.

_“Kusanagi. Got something for you.”_

_“Oh? That’s rare, what do His Majesty and his puppy have for me?”_

_“To celebrate your big day, we’ve decided to give you a very cool present!”_

_“...A flower crown?”_

_“Totsuka’s idea.”_

_“And you just decided to go along? A flower crown? How old are you guys, five?”_

_“No, no, you see, you’re going to college, right? I saw on TV that people getting first place in smart shows got a laurel wreath, so I thought we should make you one. But we could only find wildflowers, so that’s that?”_

_“....”_

_“That’s a long sigh.”_

_“Shut up, Mikoto.”_

_“Just lower your head, college man.”_

_“Fine, fine, okay. Thanks, I guess.”_

_“Fufu, as I thought, it suits you, Kusanagi-san. Congratulations!”_

_“Hm. Congratulations.”_

_“...Thanks, idiots.”_

Thinking back, he didn’t know Totsuka sneakily took the picture that time. He chuckled slightly, a finger hovering at the edge of the page, eyes closed.

It was already the last one.

“Ah, seems like I came just in time to catch you from collapsing into the past.”

That light, melodic voice. It didn’t come from his memories.

Kusanagi whipped his head up, forcing his burning, wet, heavy eyes to open.

By the window sill, there stood a man with soft sandy hair and a smile like the drop of sunshine.

“Totsuka.”

The man shook his head. He crossed the room until he stood in front of Kusanagi, steps quiet. Too quiet. Blood stained his side, dotting his chest. Fragile, breakable body covered by a blue coat that had turned into a sick, deadly tone of purple.

“Totsuka...”

“You shouldn’t have dreamt of me,” Totsuka whispered, “Not like this, at least. I’d made sure to leave you enough happy memories, had I not?”

Kusanagi just let out a dry, dry laugh and embraced the beloved vassal tight to his chest, and he wasn’t that sure whose heart was bleeding more.

“Oh, Kusanagi-san…” Totsuka smiled. Kusanagi was holding him close, so close, yet he could hear no heartbeat. “You’ve always been prone to draw the shorter stick, neh?”

Light peeked through the window. Kusanagi woke up, alone on his empty, spacious bed. There was no trace of tears anywhere, not in his eyes, not on his cheeks, and certainly not on the pillow.

He drew a long breath, got up, washed his face, dressed, made breakfast, woke Anna up, opened the bar, spoke with the clansmen, handled the piled up messes that kept being dumped upon him, all with a calm smile on his lips.

That had been just a dream, after all.

And the days passed.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Kusanagi wasn’t sure if he was getting hallucinations.

Sometimes, when he least expected it, he thought he caught something at the corner of his eyes. A petite figure, a flash of red, a gleam of metal on a passing stranger’s bare ear, an out of place jingle of chains, a butterfly in winter, a flame in the other side of the mirror.

At times like that, Anna looked at him oddly. He always made sure he smiled back.

He wasn’t lying to her if he simply didn’t speak anything.

It had been a while, things had been up and down. There was no short of business to attend to nor people to care about. Kusanagi didn’t have time to think if he was slowly going insane or not.

Deep down, he knew. He had been putting sorrow on the farthest place on his shelf, knowing full well that unbalanced things were bound to fall.

Anna was very important to him. Homra was his family. This bar was their legacy. Still, they weren’t replacements, they couldn’t fill the things had been lost forever. There was a void inside him that, despite whatever they said about time healed, only grew as time gone by.

He hadn’t dared to let himself feel it even once.

Perhaps, one day when he somehow lost control of it, it would explode like a time bomb, leaving a deep, scorching black pit in his heart. Or maybe, just maybe, it would harden, shrink into a small, pathetic thing, sink under his blood and bones, eventually become a benign tumour.

Until that day came, Kusanagi was grateful for the reminders, those little tricks of light, tricks of mind. He still hadn’t so much as gotten used to looking down and saw only a shadow of his instead of three yet.

He might have heard someone laughing brightly. He might have felt a large, callous hand resting on his head. In the wind, his cigarette smelled like a different brand, his lips shivered against the kiss of a freshly fallen snowflake.

_“Give me a cigarette too, Kusanagi-san, I want to try it out just once.”_

_“Really now? Think you can handle it, kid?”_

_“Mah, mah, I’m not a kid anymore, you know? I’m totally old enough to smoke. Besides, you and King started smoking and drinking ages ago.”_

_“Guess we chainsmokers are bad examples, huh? Fine, here, but don’t choke to death on me.”_

_“Hehe, of course, of cour— c-cough!”_

_“Told ya.”_

_“Ack…So bitter! How do you smoke this every day? You must taste all bitter too! Just like King! I think you two should try having something a teeny bit sweeter sometime.”_

_“Yeah, sur-... wait, what?”_

_“Mh? What is what?”_

_“What.”_

_“That’s what I’ve just asked.”_

_“...No, nevermind. I misheard.”_

_“Or, you know, Kusanagi-san, maybe you didn’t.”_

_“Wha—”_

The sun had set, the last dying orange light swallowed by a greedy curtain of dark blue. On the other side of the uncaringly busy streets, Kusanagi thought he saw a glimpse of two people standing close together, a blond and a redhead. Then the next second they were gone, out of sight, completely disappeared into the ever moving crowd.

The weight of loneliness stood heavily on his feet. Ah, how naive of him, just who could ever be saved by such a thing like this.

“Izumo?”

Anna looked at him. So much concern in such young eyes of a child who should have had the happiest and most beautiful childhood. He smiled at her, taking her small hand in his own, and walked on.

That had been just a hallucination, after all.

And the days passed.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Kusanagi wasn’t sure if he was seeing ghosts.

The weather forecast had predicted today to be a windy, cloudy day. It wasn’t. It was tantalizing sunny all well into the afternoon, without even so much as a soothing breeze. The heat wasn’t insufferable per se, so Kusanagi decided it shouldn’t hurt to pay a leisure trip to the convenient shop.

The serein caught him off guard, much like how the rainbow breaking through the clouds did.

“Wow.”

Sunshine, rain, and rainbow at the same time. Beautiful. How long had it been since he noticed the beauty in such a simple weather phenomenon? Quite a long time now, huh? It should have been more of a Totsuka’s thing, however, if it was summer shower he was talking about…

Kusanagi realized he had unconsciously sought shelter from the rain at the exact spot as that time. A soaked stranger who also thought it was a good idea to hide from the downpour stole a confused glance back at him, not knowing that she was standing exactly where that person had stood.

_“Geez, it’s raining all of a sudden. My newly bought pack is ruined, just my luck. Mikoto, you okay?”_

_“...Yeah.”_

_“God forbid you to say the truth once. You’re as wet as a fish, your hair is so soggy I can’t even tell which your antennas are, you’re standing funny because you absolutely hate wearing wet socks.”_

_“You’re not much better.”_

_“Excuse me, if I didn’t pull you under a roof you would have still been wandering aimlessly in the rain right now. Even though you’re a king it doesn’t mean you can just burn a cold away!”_

_“...”_

_“No. Mikoto. Do not try to burn a cold away.”_

_“I’m not thinking about that.”_

_“Hah. Could have fooled me.”_

_“You’re a menace.”_

_“And you’re a dumbass.”_

_“Prick.”_

_“Walking headache.”_

_“Mother Hen.”_

_“Smelly beast.”_

_“Shut up.”_

_“Make me.”_

_“Fine.”_

_“...”_

_“...”_

_“I give it 60 points.”_

_“Stingy.”_

Kusanagi tore his gaze away, leaned back on the mossy wall, for once not paying any mind to his neatly ironed clothes, and watched the rainfall. His pack of cigarettes managed to survive this time, so he drew one, put it between his lips with a certain tenderness. He flipped his lighter open, letting the small dancing flame burn nicotine into his lungs. A sort of bitter, toxic, good for nothing taste, as addictive and tormenting as memories of the days long gone.

Someone said you didn’t have to breathe the smoke if you would just stop breathing

The bartender took a mouthful, held it until his eyes burn at the corners, then exhaled completely.

“Bad habits die hard, huh, Kusanagi?”

For a startling moment when he looked back, he saw Mikoto standing there idly, a small smile on his face. The man looked the same. Same stubborn hair, same wrinkles under his eyes, same low voice, same old red, bright, warm aura despite his stoic face and seemingly lazy stance.

“Mikoto!”

That one single second may have disrupted his so carefully crafted composure. Kusanagi didn’t even notice how his hand was moving on its own to grab at his King’s arm. His fingers clenched onto the fabric, knuckles turning white and trembling out of desperation, out of longing and unguarded false hope.

He could feel the woman’s shocked stare before he even saw it. No, he couldn’t handle seeing it. His eyes quickly cast down, rejecting the truth, as though it had been a survival mechanism built into him.

“Pardon me, ma’am. I mistook you for someone else.”

Just like that, his composed smile snapped back on his face like a rubber band.

The rain was still falling. It didn’t look like it would stop anytime soon.

Kusanagi had half a mind to just run back home, however, surprisingly enough, Yata and Kamamoto.came to hand him an umbrella.

“Yo, Kusanagi-san. Anna told us you have gone to the convenient store for almost an hour. I figured you must have been caught in the summer shower somewhere on the way.” Yata scratched his nose a bit shyly. “You should have called us, you know? We’d be running to help much sooner.”

Kamamoto patted the shorter man’s back, laughing. “He was so worried about you, Kusanagi-san!”

“I-I was not!”

“You don’t need to deny it, everyone was. But you fought to be the delivering one so seriously!”

Kusanagi took the umbrella from them. It had been Totsuka’s choice of souvenir a few years ago. Cheap looking, pinkish red, with a weird fish-like pattern. He glanced at his bickering clansmen. Those kids had gotten livelier again lately, huh? Much grown up as well, but still got a long way to go.

“Then, shall we go home?”

Maybe it was only a matter of time until all the coils in his mind would begin to break. Maybe it was only a matter of time he would let it happen.

Until then, he was needed still.

That couldn’t have been a ghost, after all, could it?

And the days passed.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Kusanagi wasn’t sure if he was blessed by guardian angels.

Things had been hectic, dangers rattling and tumbling down the hill and up the highway. There was no time for rest. He didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, didn’t dare to stop to think about himself, dragging his tired feet across the battlefield and trying at every cost to appear perfectly fine doing so. It was hellish — well, not as much as the night he had carried Totsuka’s cold body back to the bar, or the two weeks after that, or the snowy day he witnessed a sword of Damocles crumble to dust — and God, why did he even have a proper scale for things like these?

“This is the burden that I have to carry, the ordeal I have to overcome.” He spoke out loud to the foggy mirror when he finally got half an hour to spare and decided to take the first shower in four days. “For everyone’s sake.”  

He felt as if he himself was becoming a strange incinerator, the fire kept burning, burning, parching the void inside of him. Even so, his palms, which were pressed flat on the wall for a somewhat sense of steady, were ice cold. The design of the granite looked like a disguised spider net, twisting and wringing under the leaves, just waiting for the perfect chance to seize its prey.

His phone rang, breaking him from his wandering thought. Kusanagi didn’t need to read the contact name to know that break time was over. Emergency ringtone.  

War was coming, and it was far from quiet.

_“How is he?”_

_“Not fatal at least, but the wound looks bad and it’s still bleeding, so not good either. I’ll have to bring him to the hospital. Can you manage things here, Mikoto?”_

_“Sure. Go ahead.”_

_“I’m sorry…I was careless.”_

_“Save your breaths, brat. I’ll knock your damn head later.”_

_“King, please don’t be mad…”_

_“It’s alright, we’re not mad at you. It’s my fault and yet you got hurt. I should have known it was a trap. I made us walk right into it, I’m such a fool. But let’s not talk about that right now. You hang in there, okay? Wrap your arms around me. Good, up you go. Mikoto, burn a way out for us.”_

_“No blood, no bone, no ash.”_

_“Haha...Just as I thought, King’s power is to protect.”_

Kusanagi flicked his lighter, sending powerful flame bursts at the enemy. This red of his was granted by Anna’s, now, and while he wielded it so fluidly, it didn’t really feel the same. He wouldn’t put them on a scale, god forbid he did. And yet.

And yet…

Suddenly, a blinding light flashed.

His hand flew up to cover his eyes by instinct. No good. How could he space out in the middle of a fight? That momentary distraction would be the death of him.

He heard something crack. The sound was loud and sharp.

At first, it was dark. Then, it was noisy. And finally, it was silent.

_“Neh, say, how do you think we would have turned out if we never met each other?”_

_“Ah? Are you drunk already?”_

_“Good question, actually. I’ve never really thought about it, though my first thought is that “Who would feed the two of you then?”. Anyway, I would most likely still inherit the bar and do some simple side businesses. Working hard, making money, having suspicious guys hanging around everyone once in a while, peace and quiet.”_

_“Hahaha, Kusanagi-san is always so adult-minded!”_

_“Was that a compliment? It sounded like a compliment. Am I supposed to say thanks?”_

_“Too bad you stuck with us.”_

_“Mh, still, ya know? I don’t dislike running a supernatural gang either. Sure that sometimes you guys make me want to pull all my hair out, and the weirdest things happen now and then, but it’s also been kind of...fun. Yeah. Without meeting you I’d be working to the bone while being bored out of my mind, and then probably end up dying friendless and heartbroken.”_

_“Awwwwwww.”_

_“Heh.”_

_“What’s with those reactions? I was being honest here. How about you answer, then?”_

_“Dunno. Too bothersome thinking about it.”_

_“That’s just like you, huh? See, that’s exactly why we couldn’t leave a wild beast like you alone.”_

_“King would just be roaming the streets aimlessly, half wanting to have nothing to do with this world, half wanting to do nothing about it. He wouldn’t want to be a part of this society where everyone was different — he was different, maybe wouldn’t even need it.”_

_“...”_

_“...Hey, you’re drunk, Totsuka. Let’s stop drinking?”_

_“It’s fine. He’s right.”_

_“Haha, and I guess I wouldn’t be able to be the vassal for King and help out the bar anymore. Ah, that sounds really boring, just imagining it makes me shudder. What would I do to pass the days? A thousand hobbies couldn’t make me as happy!”_

_“You’ve always been interested in a lot of things, huh? But you didn’t find many things to actually bother yourself. You would be so lost, breezing through life with empty smiles.”_

_“Ah, King’s also right.”_

_“...Totsuka.”_

_“Yes, Kusanagi-san?”_

_“Mikoto.”_

_“Mh?”_

_“I’m glad we met each other. Really.”_

_“...Yeah. All cluster fucks otherwise.”_

_“Ehehe, I’m telling you, it’s fate, it’s fate~!”_

When Kusanagi opened his eyes, it was already the story of three days later.

He recognized the white ceiling, white bed sheet, white IV, and white, white bandage on his chest. His eyes were dry. His throat was too dry. He groaned, turning on his side only because he needed to make sure he could still move.

“Oya. I see you’ve awakened from your slumber, Kusanagi-shi.”

He didn’t expect that, of all things. Munakata, of all people.

“Do I have the pleasure to know why you are here?”

The Blue King smiled politely. “A curious series of coincidences, perhaps.”

“I’m afraid I don’t make it a habit to do puzzles so early in the morning .”

Munakata didn’t look very offended by Kusanagi’s sour mood, as he never looked offended by anyone else but the late Red King. He only gazed ahead calmly. A heavy, steady rock undisturbed by harsh weather.

“Where’s everyone?“

“Kushina-kun, Awashima-kun, and a good number of people showed great concern toward your condition. It took a certain amount of time and human resources to assure their own health and safety, first and foremost. I reckon they should visit the moment the hospital’s gate opens.”

“I see…”

“Kusanagi-shi.”

“Hm?”

“One certain barbarian may have said something along the line of “This isn’t like you”.

Upon looking at Munakata’s eyes again, Kusanagi realized he had been wrong. Those faint violet eyes weren’t calm, weren’t undisturbed. If anything, they hid a sort of deep, seeping loneliness so akin to his own that he found it terribly startling.

He didn’t like how it turned hard to breathe so suddenly.

“I suppose that person would.”

Munakata stood up. He looked out the window, far beyond the frame and maybe much further, into the past and the future and the possibilities.

Silence reigned the room well until the first ray of the dawn shone into Kusanagi’s sandy hair. Only then, Munakata stood up, hands folding behind his back. He told only one more thing.

“That hand grenade should have hit you, however, a stray flame flew over from your clan’s side just in time, successfully forcing it to explode in the air before it could cause full force damage on you. Considering the chaotic nature of the battle, it’s no surprise that no one is absolutely sure whose miraculous stray flame it was.”

The Blue King chuckled, put a hand on Kusanagi’s shoulder, and left.

Kusanagi’s gaze stuck on that proudful straight back coated in blue until it completely went out of sight, then fell onto the bedside table, where three cups of tea were served but only one of them was empty. He picked a cup up. It was still warm.

The next minute, Anna, Yata, as well as the rest of the clan, pushed each other through the door, followed behind by Seri and Fushimi. They brought flowers, a gallon of milk, various kinds of unhelpful products of entertainment, suspicious looking homemade food, a red bean cake, a thick file of report papers. Kusanagi greeted them with a touched smile, welcomed their well-being hugs and wishes, apologized for making them worry, collaborated smoothly with Scepter 4 for further investigation, tried to cease the inevitable bickerings.

At the end of the day, he asked them a single question.

Seri said, “It’s a good thing we found you under the ruin very quickly, so your injuries were treated right away.”

Fushimi clicked his tongue, “You were lucky. A third of a building fell onto you, yet nothing hit your head. You weren’t buried too deep either. Tsk, you shouldn’t give us more trouble by being down by such a stupid move like that, though.”

Yata shouted, “Shut up, Saruhiko! We did all the work! And Anna was the one who found him!”

Anna smiled, “I saw a red butterfly hovering around the place when Izumo was hurt. It refused to leave.”

Ah, really.

Kusanagi shook his head. How unfair. What was he supposed to do with all this information?

He should have felt fortunate, grateful, overjoy, or any other good emotions people have when their life was magically saved.

Why did it hurt?  

Why did it feel so wrong?

Why didn’t he want it to be  _this_ way?

Kusanagi sighed. His head hurt. Throbbing.

“...You should rest, Izumo.”

He closed his eyes tiredly, deciding that right now he should focus more on recovering and not thinking of the myth about guardian angels.

And the days passed.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Kusanagi wasn’t sure if he was dreaming, hallucinating, seeing ghosts, or receiving angels’ blessings.

Somewhere down the line, a peaceful time came upon them.

The war was over, the kings were gone, the kids were all grown up, and there left nothing else for him to do all of a sudden. At any given points of any given days, his hands itched for no reason, a feeling almost like having rough sand slipping through the space between his fingers.

When he thought about it properly, it was a sort of twisted kind of irony. His devotion had always been faithfully unconditional, some could say borderline infatuation, so he didn’t notice just how long he had been putting it above himself. In fact, he had carried the weight for so long that without it he felt restless (hollow, abandoned, forsaken — alright, maybe those were too dramatic).  

And one uneventful day, after wishing Anna goodnight and locking the door of the bar, he deemed it was about time for a good long walk.

His steps were heavy, however, the traces were quickly erased by the falling snow as if they had never been there. No one would know where he was going. For a brief moment, even he didn’t know either.

Then, he decided to go to the shore.

There was not even one tombstone to lay flowers onto anyway.

“You know, I prefer to keep fooling myself, at least for a little while longer.” Kusanagi light a cigarette. The gray smoke drifted in the wind. The air was bitter, and salty, and cold. “We have too many memories together, I thought if I keep remembering them every day, it’ll feel like you’re still here. Foolish, isn’t it? Before I knew it, it has already been years.”

_“Kusanagi-san, do you ever think if the dead are happier than the alive?”_

_“Huhhh? What brought that up?”_

_“Hahaha, nothing really? So, I passed a gothic shop on the way to my new part-time job today, and when I looked inside there were just so many cool skull-related things.”_

_“...And what does that have to do with your weird question?”_

_“It just comes to me that every skull is smiling ear to ear.”_

_“That’s how human’s bone structure works, moron.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Mo-ron.”_

_“You don’t need to repeat it, meanie!”_

Tonight, the sky was starry and the moon was bright. Their light shone on the waves, silver lining, constellations trapped just beneath the water surface. Kusanagi watched them tremble, heard them calling out to him. He smiled wryly and took a step forward. “Lots of things happened those years, by the way. As usual, you made a ton of messes wherever you went so I had to clean after you, huh? Even got to travel half the world for it.  On the other hand, the boys were a handful, especially Yata-chan. Glad he finally made up with Fushimi now… No short of gangs and thugs loved to give us trouble. Anna became a King. Oh, and we faced the green clan. They were so ridiculously strong, it was messed up. In the end, the Silver King destroyed the Slate, so I guess that’s that. Still busy for a while, though, gotta make sure everything runs fine.”

“Take skills to do all that, you see? Shame that I’m the only responsible adult around.” Another step. The water crept so close to the tip of his shoes. Kusanagi didn’t look down as he stepped into the ocean, not even once. “Damnit, you two better be proud of me.”

_“Did you really just burn the bed? Again?”_

_“Mhm.”_

_“This is the third one this month.”_

_“Sorry. I’ll pay for the new bed.”_

_“No, it’s fine, don’t worry about it. Just, Mikoto, you don’t look so good. At all. Another nightmare? Monsters under your bed?”_

_“Not under.”_

_“...Very well then. Tell the big scary monster he should shake in his shoes right now because I’m going to kick his ass at the count of three.”_

_“...Pfft. The hell. What are you, a monster slayer?”_

_“Nah, just a handsome bartender.”_

The water was freezing, a stabbing coldness that spread and ran up and all over every single one of his nerves. His chest tightened, his heart covered by a layer of frost. He could feel the sand underneath his feet drifting away in the current because of his weight. He wondered if the cold dark sea was trying to pull him down to the deep.

“Say, you were supposed to grow old.” Kusanagi closed his eyes and listened to the rocking waves as if they could have filled the gap between him and those two. How strange. He was above water, and yet, this sensation of slowly, slowly sinking away filled his mind. “Reckless, silly, unfrightened, unreasonable, struggling, love starving, and old. There’s so much in this world that you had not yet to enjoy, had not yet to get delivered to you. We didn’t make a promise, but I always thought how nice it would have been if we were able to grow old together. I also knew it was too much of a wishful thinking.”

_“No, no, King, touch it just lightly so it can move around. Yikes, don’t move it by yourself, I can tell that!”_

_“Tsk. Fine, stop being so noisy.”_

_“...What are you guys doing?”_

_“Oh, perfect timing, Kusanagi-san. Come here, come here, sit down!”_

_“What’s this? What no-good are you up to this time?”_

_“Hehe, it’s an ouija board! Basically, it lets you communicate with spirits. This kind of things is popular these days, so I borrowed a board from Yamada-san. The planchette is lost so I’m using a coin instead.”_

_“What the..? Oi, oi, isn’t it really dangerous getting involved with ghosts and stuff? No thanks, I’m not doing that to myself. Mikoto, I can’t believe you’re indulging him on such a thing like this!”_

_“He just wouldn’t shut up until I gave in. What a pain…”_

_“It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine~ Spirits can probably move a coin too.”_

_“That’s not the problem here, do you know — Stop it! Don’t pull my finger! I will not—!”_

_“Fufufu, once you connect with the spirits you can’t let go until they say goodbye. You’re with us now. Here we go. Hello, is anyone there~?”_

_“ ...Oh. My. God.”_

_“Just suck it up, Kusanagi. Ghosts aren’t real anyway.”_

_“Hellloooo?”_

_“I can’t believe.”_

_“Hiiiiiiiii? Mh? Oh? Is it moving? It is, isn’t it? It’s moving! It says...Goodbye?”_

_“Ah. My bad.”_

_“King!! Not again!”_

_“This is so stupid.”_

_“One more time, one more time.”_

Opening his eyes again, Kusanagi realized he had gotten a little bit more used to the cold sea now. The tide had raised up to around his knees without him noticing.

“Fucking idiots. How could you leave me in a world like this?” He pulled a coin from his pocket, holding in on his palm. “I bet you can’t even move a coin a single inch if you were here at all.”

He waited for a few seconds. A few minutes. No tick-tock. Just the steady sound of waves kissing the land, over and over and over and over.

Of course, he knew.

A coin wouldn’t — simply couldn’t move on its own.

_“It’s fine, it’s fine, everything will work out somehow, neh?”_

_“I’ll just do whatever I want.”_

He knew.

 _“_ If this was a story full of happiness, this would be the part when we woke up in each other’s arms, crying and grinning and, just, being overall happy. Because we were alive, we were saved. But, the story about our lonely glory had ended with a tragedy. It was a very old, a very predictable kind of ending.”

The cigarette had shortened a great length, almost going to burn itself completely away. Kusanagi took it out of his mouth and gripped it with his other hand, letting the weak, pathetic fire burn his skin.

“And, the worst of it all, there simply couldn’t be any other way else to end the story, no matter what,” He drew a deep, deep breath, feeling the smoke filling up his throat, his lungs, his blood, his soul, yet his eyes were still so cursedly dry. “ Even so, is it a bit selfish to say that I still want  — without you, I still want to be able to live on and grow old and tell our silly tales for the years to come?”

He didn’t take another step toward the unwelcome, unfathomable sea. He stood there, under the beautiful night sky, listening to the wind and the waves and the snowfall and the steady sound of his own beating heart.

Kusanagi made his way back when the moon bid good morning to the sun. Back to the line where the water met the ground. To the sand. To the snow. To the road. To the familiar streets.

Back to the bar. Burnt hand reaching for the door.

And then…

A sudden gust of wind swept over him, so strong that he lost his balance for a second. The thing that he was still holding stubbornly, a tad loosely (just in case, just...), dropped onto the floor with a chinking sound.

_Clink!_

Kusanagi’s eyes widened. He wanted to look for the source of that little noise again, but the door chose that moment to open - no, to be opened by the other side. Red, red, some blue, some white, more familiar faces greeting him than he should ever expect to see so early in the morning.

“Izumo. Merry Christmas.” Anna smiled happily.

“Surprise!? Kusanagi-san, Merry Christmas!” Yata and Kamamoto cheered brightly.

“Our princess wanted you to have the best Christmas party of all time, so we went all out!” Akagi and Bandou nodded at each other proudly.

“Come look at our hard work, Kusanagi-san. The decoration and food are already prepared.” Chitose and Dewa raised their hand up like wannabe butlers.

“You’ve always done so much for us, so please take this as our gratitude. I hope you’ll have much fun today.” Fujishima and Erik bowed playfully.

“Good morning, Kusanagi-shi. It seemed like Kushina-kun wished for a Christmas party with the attendance of all available clan, therefore we Scepter 4 decided to take part in today. For a proper holiday atmosphere, I’ve prepared gifts and a standing-in Santa as well.” Munakata gave a sparkling smile, head tilting to Seri who was holding a huge sack, and a certain embarrassed, scowling Fushimi in Santa costume.

“Neko wants to eat pancakes and meets Anna, so she’s here with Shiro and Kurosuke! Christmas is the best! So much food!” The Silver clan made their presence known by giving out rice balls to everyone.

Kusanagi stared at them for a long moment, couldn’t find a word to say, couldn’t even move. At the corner of his eyes, he saw the coin gleaming oddly. Snow on his shoulders shouldn’t feel so warm. The numbing cold running in his veins vanished. Even though no one was touching him yet, he could sense so clearly there were pairs of arms wrapping around him, could hear endearing whispers in his ears so distinctly, could feel tiny, quiet lips ghosting over his own trembling ones.

And his eyes watered. Easily. Had been aching to for so, so, so long. Overwhelming with tears of joy, of relief, of sheer happiness, of being alive, of...belonging.

And he didn’t know whose shoulders he was crying on anymore, too many of them, both too real and too surreal, yet definitely there.

There, never left, only gained.

 

Kusanagi wasn’t sure if he was dreaming, hallucinating, seeing ghosts, or receiving angels’ blessings.

But he didn’t need to know anymore.

Because there he was,

 

Cradled in love.

 

 


End file.
